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Game engines provide the framework needed to add Artificial Intelligence capabilities to games. Various engines provide the tools for programming agent behaviors, movement, path-finding and states to create the illusion of a thinking actor in a game.

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Physics engines are used to replicate (to some approximation) real world physics within a digital world, telling 3D objects how to react with the surrounding environment. The engine simulates updated positions and orientations for these objects when they collide or overlap, without having to create individual animations for each and every object. There are two central types of physics simulations; rigid body and soft body simulators. In rigid body simulators objects are grouped into categories based on how they should react, and are less performance intensive. Soft body physics involves simulating individual sections of each object such that it behaves in a much more realistic way.

Callum Proudfoot
Eva Aminian
Ben Bojang

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In a simple definition, a shaders is a computer program that usually runs the GPU to tell each and every pixel how they should look like in the game. In computer graphics a shader is a type of program that is used for shading in 3D scenes the production of appropriate levels of light, darkness and color in a rendered image.

We also of Dynamic lighting is used in game engines as well, these are a type of simulated where lighting calculations are computed in real time. Therefore, using dynamic lighting on the fly lighting calculations accounting for real-time variations, such as change in game state, narrative player's and characters positions and camera movement

Rick Linch
Declan Asura
joseph douglas
Marina Dreimane

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Sound + Music in games. / Team: Cole Dickinson, Gazz Jones, Steven Musiwa, Tiberius Ginn.

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Sound + Music in games. / Team: Cole Dickinson, Gazz Jones, Steven Musiwa, Tiberius Ginn.

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Sound effects and music in game engines, is best used emotive experiences in games and to set atmospherics, this can be used in background music to set a scene which can be described in an audio format to show the player a boss may have arrived, there is danger close, in FPS for firearm sounds, explosions, radio call outs, enemy tracking eg foot steps.In a single player mode this can be an npc given and completing a quest, or in certain areas of the game it can be background music for example in star wars it could that age old song in the cantina to show you are in a social area, the best example is the doom 2016 soundtrack which can cause a surge in adrenaline, it can really set the scene in all aspects which is the biggest reason they are needed in the engine from a grass roots base

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Game engines (such as Unity) can be used to write rules that allow for the creation of "real" computer intelligence's that can self-learn and adapt, enabling AI's to learn/produce complex behaviors in a relatively short amount of time. Utilising rewards and penalties, machine agents learn new skills and behaviors in order to obtain rewards and avoid penalties.

Source/s: https://venturebeat.com/2019/07/15/how-video-game-engines-help-create-smarter-ai/

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Video game developers have longed used artificial intelligence to help create believable worlds. So it's not too surprising that researchers can now use some of those same game-making tools to train AI.

During a talk at VentureBeat's Transform 2019 conference last week, Unity Technologies VP of AI and machine learning Danny Lange argued that game engines are perfect for creating what he called "real" computer intelligence - self-learning systems capable of producing complex behaviors after a short amount of time. With game engines (like the company's own Unity engine), you can simulate the rules of the real world and test intelligent agents against it.

"If you think about [it], the game engine has three dimensions, time, physics ... it has everything you need to play around with the core elements that led to [human] intelligence," said Lange.

The company has been training agents in various scenarios through its Unity ML-Agents Toolkit plugin. The agents acquire new skills and behaviors via reinforcement learning, where the only thing it knows in any given virtual environment is what's right (getting rewarded for accomplishing the task) and what's wrong (getting penalized). Other than that, it's a blank slate.

One example Lange showed involved a chicken trying to cross a busy road. The goal for the agent was to grab the presents (the reward) scattered around the level without getting hit by the cars (the punishment). The AI struggled at first as it learned the rules of the game, but after six hours of repeated training, Lange said it became "superhuman," deftly dodging cars while collecting over 100 gifts in a row.

In another scenario, the agent had a spider-like avatar made up of eight joints and four legs. The AI had to figure out how to use and control those body parts so that it could move forward. The result is a bit janky (the spiders hop around more than they walk), but in the future, this kind of accelerated learning can help game developers save some time when creating non-playable characters.

"Imagine the programming here that I'd need to write - some Java, C#, C++ programming, Python, you name it - that tells which joint to move, when, and how much," said Lange. "Or I can just let the spider wiggle around for an hour, and through trial and error, it figures out how to move four legs and eight joints in some pattern from left to right."

Lange and his team took that idea a step further with Puppo, an agent in the shape of an adorable corgi. Using reinforcement learning and physics-based movement, Puppo learned how to walk, run, jump, and fetch a stick. The researchers even built a simple game (where you flick the stick with your mouse) to show how efficient the dog is at retrieving the stick.

In a different demo, Lange showed what happens when you put dozens of individually trained Puppos together. Their goal was to chase after a bowl full of bones on a track field. As they ran toward the bowl (which was constantly moving along the track), the dogs became competitive and started pushing each other over and made their own shortcuts by running on the grass.

Earlier this year, Unity partnered with Google to create a machine learning test with Obstacle Tower, a video game that only AI agents can play. It's made up of 100 levels that challenge an agent's ability to navigate over obstacles, including puzzles, complicated layouts, and dangerous enemies. Unity is currently running a contest to see which AI can make it the farthest (Lange said the leading contestant could only reach level 19).

With Obstacle Tower and other projects, the company is trying to prove that when combined with game engines, reinforcement learning can be a powerful method for making sophisticated AI. After all, Lange said, it's the same process all intelligent life on our planet uses to survive.

"That's how kids operate. That's how we operate. That's how animals operate. ... Through the learning process, you move from not having a clue [about something] to actually starting to understand [it]," he said.

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How video game engines help create smarter AI

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Video game developers have longed used artificial intelligence to help create believable worlds. So it's not too surprising that researchers can now use some of those same game-making tools to train AI.

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Artificial Intelligence in games is used to control npc characters, villains and envorinmental characters such as monsters, aliens and animals. In other games, such as puzzle games, it is used to control the other player (examples of games that use this are games that involve gambling).

An example of a game that uses AI is Animal Crossing, used to control the fish and bugs moving around in an attempt for the player not to catch them, as well as the villagers themselves, walking around and dancing, as well as reacting to music playing from speaker assets when within a certain radius of the device. They also use it to respond to the player when they emote at them or give them a gift. Characters such as Timmy and Tommy or Mable use AI to greet people and follow them when they enter their shops.

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Programming is the foundation of the Game Engine, the skeleton in which components are built off of. The scripting is responsible for executing the many facets of the engine so it runs seamlessly. A specific example of scripting in a game engine is netcode, the script responsible for connecting clients in a stable and consistent way. Programming is also behind ‘triggers’ such as cutscenes playing when arriving at a certain location or status, or an enemy spawning. Originally programming was the only facet of a digital game, for example ‘Pong’ consists solely of code, and any graphic or sound effect was the result of a line of code and not an image or recorded sound effect. Instead of programming being ‘A.I.’ itself, scripting allows the A.I. to access it’s ruleset such as pathfinding or enemy avoidance.

Sean Crowley
Connor Farquhar
James Pearson
Ben Castellucci

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Put the names of the team members at the top of your research. This research should be useful to everybody in the class.

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Particle systems are one of the many systems that a game engine enables. It uses a multitude of sprites, 3D models and other objects so as to mimic and create different effects that wouldn't normally be possible, such as fire smoke, explosions, sparks, falling leaves and many others. The particles are controlled by an emitter which is the source of the particles and it determines aspect of the particles such as the location they are generated and where they move to. Particles can be either static or animated.